Screams Like a Little Girl

Rose: They're rats! Dozens of rats, vacuum-packed rats.The Doctor: And you decided to scream.Mickey: It took me by surprise!The Doctor: Like a little girl?Mickey: It was dark, I was covered in rats!The Doctor: Nine, maybe ten years old. I'm seeing pigtails, frilly skirt...

As a tough masculine fighter, you never cry, never wince at a hit, and talk in a manly baritone. But it's amazing how a Groin Attack, little needle, or garter snake can make your voice rise four octaves into a three-year-old's scream. It seems inherently funny to see this grown man emit a girly scream. This trope is usually played for laughs, as it is hard to take the image of a man who Screams Like a Little Girl seriously. This is sometimes associated with a Camp Gay or the Non-Action Guy character.

Comedy-based logic dictates that the more butch the guy is, or the more he runs his mouth about being tough, or the lesser the actual danger is, the funnier it is when he screams like a girl.

Zoicite screams like a girl when confronted by rats in the original Japanese version of Sailor Moon. And people wonder why he was rewritten as a female in the English dub. Later in that same scene, Zoicite screams "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! IT'S A WALL OF RAAAAAAAAAAAATS...!"

Early in Azumanga Daioh, a war against a cockroach begins after a very high-pitched scream erupts from one of the students. Afterward, it's revealed the source of that scream was Sakaki who, while being an actual girl, is also Tall, Dark and Bishoujo and normally has a deep voice.

In any Ecchi anime, whenever the guy walks in on a girl taking a bath, you'd expect the girl screaming at the guy. This is not the case in High School DxD when Issei walks in on the bathroom while Asia was still inside. He's the one screaming and trying to cover himself instead of the other way around.

Comic Books

Sabretooth: Scream for me.Deadpool: Scream? Well, if you insist. AAAAAHHH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AAAAAHHH AAAAAHHH!!Sabretooth: Enough, Wilson.Deadpool: No, wait -- now I'll do it like a little girl. eeek! eeek! eeek!

Sue Storm calls herself on this in the first arc of Ultimate Fantastic Four, to the confusion of her teammates. "I screamed like a girl! That's so disappointing."

Made even better in the commentary when the directors and writers discuss how the screenwriter voiced the girly scream, and he was a man. They tried getting a real woman to scream, a child to scream, but decided to keep the screenwriter's scream, because "no-one can scream like a little girl like he can."

President Buffoon in Monsters vs. Aliens shrieks like a frightened girl the first time he sees Ginormica. Especially amusing since the previous four identical girly screams were from an actual girl. The scene is even funnier when you consider that Ginormica was the only one of the monsters that scared him. Shows that a powerful, unstoppable woman is what all men fear most—even the President!

In one of the trailers for the CGI film Chicken Little, the title character's father warns him that in a few seconds he's going to scream like a little girl as they try to avoid the meteorites being hurled upon them. Sadly, this never happens in the actual film.

Lampshaded in Resident Evil: Degeneration when Claire and the other survivors are holed up in the small office they hear a high pitched scream and Claire decides to investigate. A few scenes later she comes back with an unknown man and people ask where the "girl" is.

In Open Season, Ian the Stag, manliest of Mule Deer, is galloping gracefully with his herd across the river when the floodwater comes down. Mid-leap he turns to look at the rushing water and gives a girly scream just as it hits.

Arguably the best moment in the excellent episode Space Mutiny was the big finale where the hero, Dave Ryder, emits an enraged one of these just before calmly hopping out of the "space buggy" he's about to ram into the bad guy.

When attacked by Alice in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the first thing Sam does when he gets his breath back is to scream. Then scream some more. Then scramble out of the room, screaming. Understandable though, under the circumstances.

Sam has another absolutely hilarious one during the highway chase of the next sequel, Dark of the Moon. During the chase, one of the Decepticons deliberately topples over a truck carrying construction pipes, right in front of Bumblebee (who has Sam inside him). In order to avoid getting hit, Bumblebee transforms, jumps over the truck whilst throwing Sam over it as well, then grabs him in mid-air before they hit the ground, and transforms back into vehicle form whilst putting Sam back into a perfectly seated position. Sam, having gone through the entire transformation process whilst inside Bumblebee, freaks out as soon as he's back in his seat.

When running from a series of explosions and gunplay in The Fifth Element, radio host Ruby Rhod screams incessantly like a little girl through several minutes of scenes.

In What's New Pussycat, Woody Allen is getting cozy with Romy Schneider at his grubby little artist's garret—he produces a cigarette and suavely lights it—and burns his finger. He excuses himself, gets up and rushes to the bathroom, pulls shut a flimsy curtain to close it off, and lets out a shrill girly scream (causing her to jump) -- he emerges a moment later with an insouciant swagger.

The Lord of the Rings: Merry and Pippin stole Gandalf's best firework and light it prematurely -- while inside a tent. When it actually goes off, Pip lets out the girliest scream you can imagine. Billy Boyd didn't know that the thing was actually going to explode, so the scream is real. Also, according to the commentary, during said scene, Boyd wet himself, earning the amusing nickname "Pissylegs".

Fans love Stargate Atlantis actor David Hewlett's scream, and it makes for great comedy several times in his movie A Dog's Breakfast.

In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, when Harry gets electro-tortured his screams are remarkably high-pitched (although it's somewhat justified considering the part of his body that is being shocked). This comes off as either hilariously funny or disturbing, depending on how screwed up you are.

Van Pelt, the villain of Jumanji, is pretty much prone to this trope. He's launched on a boat at high speed into a wall, literally!

Literature

Played rather seriously in one Doctor WhoEighth Doctor Adventures novel. A Mind Control device is injected into the Doctor's brain by a guy called Svadhisthana. Quite understandably, the Doctor screams, which Svadhisthana's crony finds funny. The reader probably won't, because, come on, you'd scream like a little girl too if there was a needle in your brain.

Svadhisthana and a needle. Pain in the base of his skull, a hot lance into the centre of his mind.
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Darlow's gutter laugh. "Screams like a girl."

And deployed strategically in another book when yet another mad scientist tries to vivisect him:

The Doctor let out a piercingly shrill scream. He’d had a number of travelling companions who used to do much the same thing, and he was pleased with the effect it had now. For added effect, he fluttered his hands at the extremes of their restraints.

The Dresden Files: If Harry Dresden and someone else are in a car and the appearance of something scary causes someone to scream in a high-pitched manner, it was the other person and most certainly not Harry.

Bernard Cornwell likes this trope. One French Giant Mook gives a "weirdly high-pitched scream" when Sharpe stabs him in the balls with a broken telescope. Sharpe's sergeant, Pat Harper likes to do this, although this is because he is imitating ancient Irish heroes like Cu Chulainn. Plenty of redshirts do this, and one Big Bad plans to do this to another Cornwell hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg:

I didn't want to distract the people who were saving my life, so I muted my mic and screamed like a little girl.
It's true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.

Live-Action TV

In the Soap OperaPassions, Ethan was attacked by a demon from the Bennett's closet to Hell. The shriek he let out was very girlish. So girlish in fact, many people commented on it on the internet and one of this Troper's co-workers said, "Not even my three-year-old girl screams like that!"

In Castle, the title character gives one when a dead body tumbles out of the fridge he opens. Naturally, he attempts to protect his dignity by covering it up as a cough. Surprisingly, no one comments on it.

Frasier: That is not funny! You don't sneak up on someone and startle them!Martin: First of all, it's very funny. And secondly, I only did it to prove a point.Ronee: And you called it: he does scream like a woman.Frasier: I do not scream like a woman. It was a manly throaty wail.(Niles comes in the front door)Niles: Frasier, you may want to call security. As I got off the elevator, I heard a woman screaming hysterically.

In the episode "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", after a womanly high-pitched scream was heard.

Daphne: Are you all right?Niles: Yes. I just jumped into bed with your mother.Daphne: Oh, dear. No wonder she screamed.Niles: That wasn't her.

Friends. Ross screams like a little girl when Rachel and Phoebe come out of his apartment's curtains and shout danger to scare him.

In the episode "War of the Coprophages", Mulder has a discussion with Scully regarding a childhood encounter with a praying mantis...

Mulder: I had a praying mantis epiphany, and as a result I screamed. No, not... not a girly scream, but the scream of someone being confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet I inhabited.Scully: Mulder... are you sure it wasn't a girly scream?

In a later episode with the same writer ("Jose Chung's From Outer Space"), we get to hear Mulder's girly scream upon spotting "a real live dead alien body"—at least according to one version of the story.

In "Mr. Monk Goes Camping", when the eponymous obsessive detective encounters a bear, the previews feature actor Tony Shaloub's own scream, whereas the scream in the episode is overdubbed with a little girl's.

After Shawn and Gus are at a seance. A ghost appears, and then the lights cut back on. Shawn's love interest wonders where he and Gus went. Cut to the outside of the building, where Shawn and Gus are running for their car while screaming incomprehensibly, thus. What makes it funnier is that they're running out of a sorority, but none of the girls inside screamed.

Matthew Gray Gubler: So, we were filming the scene in which my character was being tortured. And in between takes, everyone was laughing, and I couldn't figure out why. And finally, at the end of one take, the director came up to me and said, "Okay, but can you try screaming in a way that does NOT sound like a little girl?"

An actor in The Bill had a scene where he fell off a platform while chasing a criminal in an Abandoned Warehouse. He mentioned that his scream as he did this stunt had been too high pitched, so they had to dub a more 'manly' scream on afterwards.

In Community, when the going gets tough Troy has a tendency to regress into the personality of a six-year-old girl, completely with girly screams and panicky dancing.

An episode of Mighty Ships set on the largest carrier in the world, the USS Nimitz, showed a rookie pilot getting his callsign, which is usually done by consensus of other pilots in the rookie's flight group. This particular pilot had made no mistakes even when landing on a carrier at night, but when catapulted off for the exercise had, in his own words, screamed like a little girl. Another pilot noted that "screams like a girl" could be acronymed into "slag", which is also a British slang term meaning, roughly, slut, and (though this wasn't mentioned on the show) is originally an industrial term for waste product from smelting. Congratulations, Lieutenant Slag....

Music

Newspaper Comics

In one Zits strip, a half-asleep Jeremy accidentally walks in on his mom taking a shower, scaring the hell out of both of them, a moment punctuated with the sound effect "SHRIEK!" Turns out the shriek was Jeremy's.

Pro Wrestling

Carlito screamed like a girl when Teddy Long forced him to find The Undertaker or lose his job. He was searching the backstage area when the lights flickered out and all we hear is a hilarious high-pitched scream.

Norman Smiley of WCW—so much so, in fact, that it became part of his gimmick.

Tabletop Games

Puppet Shows

In one early episode of Sesame Street, one sketch with Bert and Ernie shows Ernie unable to sleep, so Bert tells him to count sheep, but Ernie finds it dull and tries to count something else, finally deciding on balloons. An imaginary balloon appears and grows to a huge size before finally exploding and rocking the room, startling Bert awake, screaming.

Max: Mind if I drive?Sam: Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dash and shrieking like a cheerleader.

In Infinite Space, Ian apparently did this offscreen when he and Torlo evacuated Rhea (whom they thought dead until she suddenly moved). He is not pleased when Yuri and Torlo mock him about it.

BlazBlue. If you use the English voice, in Ragna's Gag Reel, after being informed that he's a ghost, the very thing he feared, he screams like a little girl. There's no girly scream in the Japanese voice, though.

Glottis: There was this one high-pitched whine it was making -- really grating noise, you know? And I searched and searched, but I couldn't find the source of the noise, until we pulled in here.Velasco: Was it the blower?Glottis: No, it was Manny screaming in the back like a cat tied to a cruise missile!

Blood. Caleb screams like a little girl when he dies. Or is set on fire.

Caleb: AH! IT BURNS! AH AH AH AH AAAAAH!

Dragons Lair. Dirk the Daring does this a number of times, but most noticeably in one "miss" sequence during the "Crypt Creeps" scene with what looks like black goo.

Alistair of Dragon Age confesses that he used to do this while dreaming of darkspawn and the Archdemon: "I screamed like a little girl. Duncan thought I had someone in my room." He also demonstrates girly screaming in a banter with Shale, attempting to give Shale an idea of what pain feels like.

Elh of Solatorobo hates bugs and screams when they get too close. Of course, given that she is a girl, it's more understandable, but Red didn't know that at the time.

In this strip Florence thinks she's startled Sam, but he explains: "No, you did not surprise me. My plans to scream like a little girl when I reached the kitchen were made hours ago. It's pure coincidence you happened to be here at the time."

Nodded to in Something*Positive where Aubrey tactlessly reminds Davan of the time when he was a kid, was attacked by a dog, and wet himself in public, then she reassures him that his screams didn't sound girly. "A little like a boiling lobster, but not girlish at all."

Referenced in Ozy and Millie. Millie finds herself holding something she'd rather not. She asks Ozy how she can let go without screaming like a little girl. Ozy's answer? "You ARE a little girl." Millie takes the hint.

Web Original

The Nostalgia Critic sounds incredibly girly when he screams. Which is often. In a commentary, he said he does this intentionally because it's funnier than if he screams normally which just makes him sound angry.

PyschadelicSnake is the KING of this trope when it comes to horror Let's Plays. Go ahead, pick any video from a horror game he's played and I guarantee he'll scream at least once. His latest vids has the tail end of him finishing Ju-On The Grudge on the Wii, and he screams every minute.

YouTube user HamsterAlliance has given many examples of this, shrieking and yelling in surprise when he gets close to dying in a game or something scary happens unexpectedly.

Johnny Bravo does this a lot in seasons two and three. In the Spanish dub, he does even more often.

Occasionally a character in The Ren and Stimpy Show would scream like this. Depending on the situation, they would either have Billy West or John Kricfalusi do it themselves, or dub in an inappropriate female Stock Scream. Lampshaded once, where Stimpy actually says "Girlish Scream!" while doing so.

On The Venture Brothers, Dean Venture screams like a girl in the episode "Love Bheits", prompting a eunuch to quip "I'm fixed, what's your excuse?"

The earl of Lemongrab of Adventure Time doesn't scream like a little girl, so much as he screams like a schizophrenic woman on her menstrual cycle. Okay... He screams like that pretty often, due to his high, uber-puberty voice.

When Disneytook overDoug, it became rather obvious that Roger Klotz now had someone else providing his voice whenever he screamed in terror. While (in the Nick series) the title character didn't scream like a little girl, he sure did have a high-pitched scream!

When a massive stack of metal falls on him in the episode "Autoboot Camp", Sentinel Prime screams like a little girl.

So does Grandus, when he encounters the "scary organic" Captain Fanzone in "This is Why I Hate Machines". For some perspective on that last bit, Grandus transforms into what looks like one of those vehicles they use to carry the space shuttle around, and is the Autobot equivalent of a sumo wrestler.

Soundwave in the original cartoon. Given that he's supposed to be a cold, heartless Decepticon, it's surprisingly hilarious.

In the Transformers Prime episode "Scrapheap", Bulkhead lets one out when the lights go out. Miko then lets one out when she freaks out over a spider.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Space Ghost took this one step further. The body snatcher pods arrived, and he screamed once. Trying to leave the building, he finds it's been covered by The Blob; another scream. Then, he flies back into the studio and babbles incoherently in a little girl's voice before clearing his throat.

Odd Della Robbia, a few times in Code Lyoko. Notably at the end of episode "Guided Missile". Ironic since he's dubbed by a male voice actor, unlike other young boys in the series who have Cross-Dressing Voices.

Mojo Jojo also does this in "Meet the Beat-Alls" when he discovers Moko Jono's true identity.

ReBoot: Bob, Dot, Enzo and Mike the TV get trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons type game and come across a giant spider. Cue high-pitched scream. Bob looks at Enzo. Enzo looks at Dot. Dot shrugs and points at Mike (the source of the scream).

Ben 10 Alien Force After Ben sees a television advertisement for Sumo Slammers the motion picture, he does this in a very fan-girly way.

Rank's Camera Man: Rank may not know how to treat little girls, but he sure knows how to scream like one!

General Skarr from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as part of being the world's Butt Monkey, most notably in one episode where he is caught on fire by Grim's scythe in his vain attempts to prevent Billy from destroying his beloved garden, where he continues to screech until Grim puts the fire out by stomping on him... poor guy never catches a break.

Real Life

One of the unfortunate realities of having an adrenaline rush is that it tightens all of your muscles -- including your vocal cords. This means that even people who are perfectly brave can wind up screaming like a girl—so long as they are flooded with adrenaline.

Could count as a Hell Is That Noise for the recipient if the rush of adrenaline is accompanied by the Fight option of Fight or Flight being selected. So if someone screams like a girl as they run away from you, go ahead and laugh, but if someone screams like a girl and runs toward you, try to run away even faster.

This 19-year-old guy while running away from an unexpected attack by a rabid otter (hilarity starts at 1:12).